Sacrificing the Church's Idols
This section originally appeared as part of Why this book? in the Manifesto v0.8. The other sections of that chapter appear below: * The Shake-up * The Age of the Spirit * New Spiritual Leadership * New Reformation * Sacrificing the Church's Idols * Disciples Answering the Call * Expect Conflict * The Red Pill or the Blue Pill? * Summary of Why this Book? * Goals of the Manifesto * An emerging Apostolic Picture ---- This can only happen over the dead body of one of the most cherished idols in western Christianity: pseudo-sacred individualism, where everyone believes there is a God given right to do as he pleases, not as he should. As the oneness of mind we read about in Acts 1:4 or 2:1 again re-emerges by our individually and corporately going back to the very apostolic and prophetic foundations of the ekklesia, the consequences will be earth shattering, and this will be felt on an individual, regional, and global level. Ask yourself: what price would you be ready to pay for this? Or are you just too happy, too content, or too employed where you are now? What needs to happen to get you involved in this? # Individuals and families will experience a deliverance of small-minded, inward-looking, consumer-driven, traditional religion that threatens to transform and degrade them into a church-tax or tithe-paying, passive couch potato, watching with increasing boredom while Christian professionals run the show. Through an apostolic and prophetic DNA-reconfiguration of their personality (a person’s bios, if you think of a computer), individuals will also experience a literal upgrade of their own human existence, including a restoration of dignity because of a recapturing of their destiny, their original purpose. The biblical word for this is an impartation of grace, a vital element of life in of our search for true significance. # Regionally, this will lead to the development of regional apostolic movements in geographical and ethnological jurisdictions that will not always follow the borders of present day nation-states, but the contours that the Finger of God has left in geography and has determined the times and exact places where people groups should live (Acts 17:26). We will witness the emergence of city churches, regional apostolic funds, and deacon networks for works of service, love and compassion for the poor and underprivileged, integrating, where possible, with communal or governmental initiatives. A new form of church, firmly embedded in between the two poles of secret, underground and organic koinonia and more public, governmental aspects of apostolic policy will begin to affect the entire matrix of society: education, economics, arts, culture, media, and politics. # Globally, this will lead to the emergence of a flat-structured, polycentric, post-denominational, extremely well connected, and truly international form of Christianity, an apostolic and prophetic movement that in the words of Jesus is aka The Bride. Rather than prescribing anti-aging crèmes and pills for a withered lady, marred by the horrible fragmental wrinkles, chattering toothlessly because of endless chewing and bickering over the splitting of Calvin’s, Luther’s or the latest Pope’s or some Christian Guru’s hairs in a spirit of religious bigotry, the Lord of the church is inviting you and me to return to the original. ---- ;Editorial note: The three-phase operation of the church here fits snugly with Acts 1:8 which reads: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." with the following equivalents: # Individuals and families: "witnesses in Jerusalem" # Regionally: "witnesses ... in all Judea and Samaria" # Globally: "witnesses ... to the ends of the earth"